ABSTRACT
How do revolutionary-like situations inflect upon the politics and everyday practices of industrial labor? Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in western Nepal, this book chapter discusses work in a brick factory and a modern food processing company in the aftermath of Nepal’s Maoist revolution. It shows that despite differences in the organization of labor, the Maoist revolutionary period has profoundly shaped the politics and everyday practices in the two workplaces: in the brick factory examined, the presence of the revolutionaries in the area prevented management from introducing new forms of severe debt bondage. In the food factory explored, the Maoist presence empowered workers from a specific ethnic background, while others were left out from Maoist union activism. Taken together, this specific lens on the interplay between the revolutionary period and industrial labor illustrates the complexities of organizing labor at two different workplaces at times of rapid political change. I further argue that the interplay between revolutionary ideology and industrial labor was felt most strongly in the immediate aftermath of the revolutionary period. But this period of labor activism was short lived, and the achievements of labor have declined in recent years due to a variety of factors including the changing political context, Nepal’s increasing integration into transnational flows of capital and labor, and the bureaucratization of labor activism across the country.
